A church run by the popular Nigerian evangelist TB Joshua should be prosecuted after the collapse of one of its buildings, a coroner has ruled.<\/p>\n
A multi-storey church hostel collapsed last September in Lagos killing 116 people, many of them South Africans.<\/p>\n
The authorities said it had more floors than its foundation could hold.<\/p>\n
“The church was culpable because of criminal negligence resulting in the death of the victims,” coroner Oyetade Komolafe said at the inquest in Lagos.<\/p>\n
Mr Komolafe said Mr Joshua’s Synagogue, Church of All Nations (SCOAN), had not obtained proper approval before putting up the structure.<\/p>\n
Those who built the hostel should also be investigated, he said.<\/p>\n
TB Joshua, referred to by his followers as a “prophet”, had blamed last year’s incident on a small plane which he said had been circling the building, a claim dismissed by the court.<\/p>\n
Straight after the building collapsed, emergency teams complained that church officials had blocked access to the site.<\/p>\n
The coroner also criticised the fact that the preacher had not appeared as a witness during the inquest.<\/p>\n
“Among the individuals and organisations summoned, only Prophet TB Joshua refused to testify,” the AFP news agency quotes Mr Komolafe as saying.<\/p>\n
The BBC’s Will Ross in Lagos says the preacher went to another court arguing that the coroner did not have the right to summon him.<\/p>\n
Mr Joshua’s services, at a mega-church in Lagos’s Ikotun district, are known for attracting thousands of people.<\/p>\n
Followers in Nigeria and abroad believe he has the gifts of healing and prophecy.<\/p>\n
Our correspondent says the coroner’s verdict is really a recommendation and now it will now be up to Lagos state’s director of public prosecutions to decide what legal action to take.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Credit: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A church run by the popular Nigerian evangelist TB Joshua should be prosecuted after the collapse of one of its buildings, a coroner has ruled. A multi-storey church hostel collapsed last September in Lagos killing 116 people, many of them South Africans. The authorities said it had more floors than its foundation could hold. “The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":6216,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[38],"class_list":["post-132883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","tag-palaver-newspaper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=132883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=132883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=132883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=132883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}